Some would call it poetic justice. If we increase thermal coal exports to China, we will not only poison the citizens of Beijing and Shanghai, we will likely contaminate our own air.
Prevailing winds across the Pacific connect us directly with China’s unfolding environmental catastrophe. Indeed, disturbing new studies have found that on some days, up to 25 per cent of Vancouver’s air pollution already comes from China, largely from coal-burning plants.
Northern B.C. First Nations adamantly opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline reacted coolly to a First Nations-backed organization that has partnered with the Aquilini Group to propose a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast.
Burnaby residents opposed to Kinder Morgan's plans to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline are rallied today in opposition to company's plans to spend $5 billion to nearly triple the pipeline's capacity.
The pipeline carries crude bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to Vancouver.
The residents of Kitimat, B.C. have voted against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project in a non-binding plebiscite.
The ballot count from Saturday’s vote was 1,793 opposed versus 1,278 who supported the multi-billion dollar project — a margin of 58.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent.
Though BC Hydro has yet to receive environmental or government approval for the proposed hydroelectric dam at Site C on the Peace River, the utility has begun the selection process for one of the biggest contracts on the estimated $8-billion project. Hydro issued a request for qualifications late last week for would-be builders of the giant earth-fill dam and associated engineering works, the first stage of a selection process that is slated to wrap up the summer of next year. The itemized to-do list, posted on the B.C. Bid website, points to a massive undertaking.
In an increasingly explosive political climate in the Kitimat area over a controversial vote on the Northern Gateway pipeline, the Mayor of Kitimat was flash mobbed by a group of mostly First Nations people, donning "No Enbridge" shirts at a Haisla girls basketball championship on Sunday. "No Enbridge! No Enbridge! No Enbridge!" yelled the packed gymnasium crowd, nearly all wearing black protest shirts. "When you're in politics for 36 years, I guess I kind of expected it," Mayor Joanne Monaghan told the Vancouver Observer Wednesday.
When labour leader Jim Sinclair turned up at the legislature last week for release of the workforce plan for the liquefied natural gas industry, I teased him that he’s being seen around the halls of government more often than when the New Democratic Party was in power. Sinclair, the longtime president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, took it with good humour, reminding me of the joke about his predecessor Ken Georgetti — that he had an actual seat at the cabinet table in the NDP government.
Leaders of a small native camp in central B.C. that is blocking the right-of-way of a proposed gas pipeline say they won’t be moving any time soon, even if a court orders them to. Freda Huson and her husband, Dini Ze Toghestiy, who are both Wet’suwet’en members, said they have been dug in so long on the Pacific Trail Pipeline Project route that they consider the camp their home now. In Vancouver over the weekend to attend “training workshops” for anti-pipeline protesters, Ms.
Indigenous Nations and allies of British Columbia unite to say No Pipelines! This weekend, Christy Clark’s worst nightmare converged on unceded Coast Salish Territory, Vancouver. After her surprise election, won on promises of a natural gas and resource extraction bonanza, her political future is staked to her claims of 100,000 jobs and $100 billion in royalties.
As Kinder Morgan's oilsands pipeline expansion lumbers towards public hearings, the National Energy Board's announcement yesterday of who can participate, and how, is stirring debate in the province. Four hundred applicants, including the cities of Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster, were granted intervenor status, allowing them to directly question the proponent and submit expert testimony and evidence when hearings begin in Jan. 2015. Of more than 2,000 applicants seeking to weigh in, 468 were outrightly rejected.
